Charles Manson’s grandson approves of Quentin Tarantino movie

By Chris Anderson chris.anderson@heraldtribune.com

Wednesday

Aug 7, 2019 at 3:45 PMAug 7, 2019 at 3:45 PM

In Hollywood, of course, anything is possible.

Even Charles Manson can live happily ever after — or at least avoid a life sentence for murder and not be held accountable for grinding the hippie counterculture of the 1960s to a macabre, bloodstained, creepy-crawly halt.

And so it was Sunday afternoon. Jason Freeman — Manson’s court-recognized grandson — walked out of the Regal Oakmont theater in Bradenton, Florida, having just seen Quentin Tarantino’s new movie “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood,” a film that puts a crazy kaleidoscopic twist on the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders by violently killing the killers themselves and therefore never allowing the specter of Manson’s evil eyes to infiltrate anyone’s nightmares.

“I can actually hold my head high when I walk out of the movie,” Freeman said. “It doesn’t portray my grandfather as brutally killing all those people, the way it’s been for the last 50 years.”

Manson spent his adult life in prison for being the mastermind behind the murders that took place Aug. 8-10, 1969, ranking among the most shocking crimes in American history. Freeman, meanwhile, spent his adult life carrying the burden of his grandfather’s actions while trying to walk down his own path.

It was fascinating to watch the movie from Freeman’s perspective as Tarantino puts more distance between Manson and the murders by imagining they never happened at all. Or at least imagining they happened in a different way.

The movie is essentially a tribute to old-time Hollywood and the effect television violence has had on society, even on the most violent among us — the Manson Family. It features Rick Dalton, a washed-up spaghetti western actor played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his stunt double Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt. In 1969, both are trying to hang on to fading Hollywood careers that time is prying from their aging, cigarette-stained fingers.

Dalton lives on Cielo Drive, next door to actress Sharon Tate, who in real life was brutally murdered by members of the Manson family 50 years ago this week.

In the movie, three Manson Family members decide to bypass Tate’s house on that fateful night and kill Dalton instead. After all, they reason, they learned to kill by watching Dalton on TV. Let’s just say it does not end well for Charles “Tex” Watson, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkle, card-carrying family members. The course of history is altered, meaning Manson was never convicted of being the mastermind of the murders and Freeman — who is not in the movie — never had to live with being the grandson of perhaps America’s most notorious criminal.

Freeman, who lives in Bradenton, has never defended the actions of Manson in any way and yet says, “It’s been hard to accept society blaming my grandfather for everything across the board. That’s wrong. It’s not the truth.” Manson was not at either of the two crime scenes in 1969 — in real life or in the movie.

After Manson died in 2017, Freeman was awarded his body by a judge and held a service for him that was performed in California and made into a documentary. Some of Manson’s ashes were scattered off Manatee County in the Gulf of Mexico.

Tarantino goes to great lengths to take you into 1969 Hollywood — too great, at times, unless you lived there or know someone who did. Freeman did. He found it interesting to see the time period his grandfather was roaming around in.

The movie is character-driven, doesn’t quite tell a story, and the ending is peak-through-your-fingers gory — though not even Tarantino could make it as gory and shocking as the actual murders were themselves, and that is saying something.

The movie, surprisingly, is often funny, and oddly satisfying in that Sharon Tate lives while Atkins, her actual killer, dies in a ball of fire, a pit bull mauls Tex Watson to death and Krenwinkle has her head endlessly slammed into a telephone like it’s a pro wrestling turnbuckle. As far as Freeman is concerned, if this gives the public a sense of justice, then he is pleased.

Manson’s full name is never said in the movie — he’s only mentioned as “Charlie” — and his character makes only one brief appearance. When Manson drives to Tate’s house one day — mistakenly thinking a record producer lives there — Freeman was the only person in the sold-out theater on the edge of his seat. No one in the theater, of course, knew who he was. A short time later he left his seat, the emotion of seeing his grandfather on the big screen being just too much.

“Actually,” he said. “I had to use the restroom.”

True, the movie does run long at two hours and 45 minutes.

But Tarantino should be happy to know that the grandson of Charles Manson gives it four out of five stars.